Background on Ancient Greek Science and Art

Science
Taken from http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/sciencemedicine/tp/042810GreekScientificInventions.htm What We Owe to the Ancient Greeks in the Field of Science

Public Domain. Courtesy of Maps of Asia Minor, the Caucasus, and Neighboring Lands The Greeks developed philosophy as a way of understanding the world around them, without resorting to religion, myth, or magic. Early Greek philosophers, some influenced by (or even importing and exporting ideas from and to) nearby Babylonians and Egyptians, were also scientists who observed and studied the known world, the earth, seas, and mountains here below, and the solar system, planetary motion, and astral phenomena, above.

Astronomy, which began with the organization of the stars into constellations, was used, for practical purposes, to fix the calendar. The Greeks estimated the size of the earth, they figured out how a pulley and levers work, they studied refracted and reflected light, as well as sound. In medicine, they looked at how the organs worked, and studied how a disease progresses. They learned to make inferences from observations. Their contributions in the field of mathematics went beyond the practical purposes of their neighbors.

Many of the ancient Greeks' discoveries and inventions are still used today, although some of their ideas have been overturned. At least one, the discovery that the sun is the center of the solar system, was ignored and then rediscovered.

The earliest philosophers are little more than legend, but this is a list of inventions and discoveries attributed through the ages to these thinkers, not an examination of how factual such attributions may be. Our knowledge of the Pre-Socratic philosophers comes from fragments of their works included in the writing of others.

Famous Greek Scientists:

Archimedes - He is considered one of the great mathematicians and scientists in history. He made many discoveries both in math and physics including many inventions. Aristarchus - An astronomer and mathematician, Aristarchus was the first to put the sun at the center of the known universe rather than the Earth. Euclid - The Father of Geometry, Euclid wrote a book called Elements, likely the most famous mathematical textbook in history. Hippocrates - A scientist of medicine, Hippocrates is called the Father of Western Medicine. Doctors still take the Hippocratic Oath today. Pythagoras - A scientist and philosopher, he came up with the Pythagorean Theorem still used today in much of geometry.

Art
Taken from http://arthistory.about.com/od/arthistory101/a/greekover.htm
As happened centuries later with a handful of Renaissance painters, ancient Greek art tends to be thought of in vague terms of vases, statues and architecture produced "a long (unspecified) time ago." Indeed - a long time has passed between us and ancient Greece, and thinking like this is a good starting point, really. The vases, sculpture and architecture were huge - huge! - innovations, and artists forever afterward owed an enormous debt to the ancient Greeks. Because so many centuries and different phases encompass "ancient Greek art" what we'll try to do rather briefly, here, is to break it down into some manageable chunks, thus giving each period its due. Sort of like Greek Art giving an acceptance speech at an awards ceremony, in which it thanks all of "the little people" for helping it to become eternally memorable. There were many phases from the 16th century BC, until the Greeks suffered defeat at the hands of the Romans at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. Classical Art (480 - 323 BC) was created during a "golden age", from the time Athens rose to prominence, to Greek expansion and right up until the death of Alexander the Great. It was during this period that human statues became so heroically proportioned. Of course, they were reflective of Greek Humanistic belief in the nobility of man and, perhaps, a desire to look a bit like gods - as well as the invention of metal chisels capable of working marble. Hellenistic Art (323 - 31 BC) went a wee bit over the top. By the time Alexander had died, and things got chaotic in Greece as his empire broke apart, Greek sculptors had mastered carving marble. They were so technically perfect, that they began sculpt impossibly heroic humans. People simply do not look as flawlessly symmetrical or beautiful in real life, as those sculptures - which may explain why the sculptures remain so popular after all these years.

Famous Greek Artists:

Polykleitos of Argos - was particularly famous for formulating a system of proportions that achieved this artistic effect and allowed others to reproduce it. His treatise, the Canon, is now lost, but one of his most important sculptural works, the Diadoumenos, survives in numerous ancient marble copies of the bronze original (32.11.2). Apelles - Flourished 4th century BC was a renowned painter of ancient Greece. Pliny the Elder, to whom we owe much of our knowledge of this artist, rated him superior to preceding and subsequent artists. He dated Apelles to the 112th Olympiad (332329 BC), possibly because he had produced a portrait of Alexander the Great. Protogenes, (flourished 4th century BC, ; b. Caunus, Caria [now in Turkey]), Greek painter, contemporary and rival of Apelles, noted for the care and time he devoted to each of his paintings. He lived most of his life at Rhodes. Little else is known of him, and none of his paintings survives. The Ialysus and the Resting Satyr were among the most renowned of his works.